Historically, the tooling for the fabrication of metal pots by deep drawing is developed by trial and error. Usually, it takes several iterations and experiments. For expensive materials such as refractory metals, e.g. tantalum, the cost of material consumed in such experiments can be prohibitively high. Also, ordinary methods produce pots having poor grain structure. Conventionally prepared metal pots are made of standard grade ingot-derived plates. These plates are known for their coarse and non-uniform grains, as well as for non-uniform crystallographic texture, particularly for tantalum and niobium. Unfortunately, these plates are unsuitable for use as components in sputtering targets.
For the foregoing reasons, it would be desired to develop better methods for making pots with properties suitable for use as sputtering targets, and being more cost-effective in both development and production.